


Fic - Inside Out

by zoemathemata



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-05
Updated: 2011-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:42:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoemathemata/pseuds/zoemathemata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for the<a href="http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/"><b>hoodie_time</b></a>  <a href="http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/393050.html">Dean focused H/C meme prompt</a> “<em>Something with Dean self-harming as a coping mechanism and Sam finding out. But not the classic, after-school-special treatment of it we often get on tv, please.</em>”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fic - Inside Out

“Must be getting slow in your old age, man, letting that demon get the jump on you,” Sam jokes as he stitches up the knife wound on Dean’s leg.

“Shut up, sasquatch,” Dean grouses, eyes focused intently on Sam’s work.

Sam drives the needle driving into Dean’s leg, pulls the suture taut; the slip-red wound edges pulling shut, squeezing out bright red where they meet.

“You’re lucky,” Sam adds, his tone getting soft. “This missed your femoral. Just barely.”

“Hm.”

***

Sam hates fucking poltergeists and the fucking frozen Minnesota ground that takes ages to dig and Dean’s fucking stupid _lighter_ which should fucking _light_ instead of just snapping and sparking and not doing fuck all else.

He can hear the sounds of Dean distracting the vengeful spirit in the old farm house while Sam is outside trying desperately to salt and burn the bones.

 _Burn_ being the operative part of that, since the salting’s been taken care of and if the goddamn lighter would actually -

It fires to life and Sam pitches it into the grave, holding a hand up to shield his face as it catches aflame.

He’s just heading back to the farm house, muscles relaxing, all the tension seeping out of them when he hears the clatter of flesh hitting wood, and then wood giving way. His legs hop-skip in his rush to get back to Dean, pushing the back door of the old farm house open and calling his brother’s name.

He finds Dean at the bottom of the stairs in an awkward pile of detritus and dust.

“What happened?” asks Sam, running his hands over Dean’s body, checking for injuries. “I salted and burned the grave. Is it still here?” Sam’s eyes dart around quickly.

“Naw,” coughs Dean, a cloud of dust spiraling up from him. “Top stair gave way. Fell.”

Sam looks up the steep flight of stairs. “Jesus, you’re lucky you didn’t break your neck.” He looks back down and Dean and finds him poking a bloody patch on his bicep, dark red liquid mixed in with dirt and mold.

“Fuck, we gotta get that cleaned up.”

“Yeah.”

***

Sam rummages around in the first aid kit looking for the sling. He knows it’s in here somewhere, and Dean’s dislocated his shoulder is gonna need it. Sam managed to pop it back in, but Dean’s arm’s gonna have to rest in the sling for a couple of days so the muscles and tendons have a chance to heal.

He finds the sling at the bottom and yanks it out, noting as he does that they’re out of polysporin and bandages.

Again.

He sighs. It seems like lately all he does is stock the first aid kit.

***

Sam comes back from picking up dinner and finds Castiel and Dean locked in one of their freaky staring contests. He places the plastic bag on the table, eyeballing both of them as he does. Castiel is standing next to Dean’s bed, staring down at Dean intently. Dean’s staring back up with a cross look in his eyes.

Sam can’t help but feel he’s totally interrupted something and he’s got no idea what.

“It has to stop,” Cas intones gravely, gaze locked on Dean.

Sam watches Dean clench his jaw, fingers curling into a tight fist at his side. Dean’s been laid up in bed with a couple of busted ribs and a wicked knife wound down his side from their latest hunt with a rougarou.

“Castiel?” Sam asks.

Castiel turns to Sam, eyes bright blue and steely. “Take better care of your brother.”

He’s gone in a flap of wings. Sam glances over at Dean who’s struggling to get out of bed.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Sam says immediately, setting his hands on Dean’s shoulders and gently pushing him back.

“‘m fine.”

“What the fuck was all that about?” Sam asks.

“Nothing.”

“Has he got a hunt for us, or something?”

“No,” Dean snaps tersely. “He’s just…” he shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

***

The sound of a gun going off has Sam jumping out of the shower without even turning it off and yanking the door open without grabbing a towel. Eyes wide, chest heaving, he’s ready for a fight but all he sees is Dean sitting at the small table cursing.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Dean’s muttering, lips a grim line.

Sam’s confused, wary. His eyes still roaming over the room but nothing’s out of place and there’s no one here but Dean.

“What the fuck, Dean?” Sam breathes, snatching a towel from the bathroom and cranking the shower off. Sam comes back out in the room and sees the blood starting to drip off Dean’s leg onto the cheap linoleum floor.

Dean hasn’t said a word, his jaw tight as he presses a cloth against his thigh.

“Jesus, what happened?” Sam says, his voice low as he crouches next to Dean.

“Fucking gun went off,” Dean bites out, pressing down against his leg, bright red blooming on his gun rag.

“ _What?_ ” Sam shouts. “You fucking shot yourself?” He bats Dean’s bloodied hands away and pulls back the dirty gun rag and sees for himself the torn denim, red soaked at the edges. Without a thought, he snatches the towel from around his own waist and presses it against Dean’s leg. Dean hisses in pain.

“Jesus fuck, Dean,” he breathes. He looks down and sees the tip of a bullet embedded in the linoleum floor. Looks like a through and through. He’s got to get Dean off this chair and check out the underside of his leg for the other wound.

“I was just going to clean it and…” Dean’s voice cuts off as Sam pushes down harder on the wound.

“You know better, you fucking _know better_ ,” Sam manages, the rush of adrenaline and fear turning into anger.

“I don’t know how it happened.”

***

Dean’s been sick for two days and whatever it is, his body’s working hard at fighting it off.

“Just let me take your temperature.”

“Fuck off, Sammy, ‘m fine.”

Sam huffs. “You’re not fine. You’re sick. Jesus, how many times do we have to go through this. Just… If you’re 102 or below, fine you can sit there and be miserable for all I care.”

Dean finally relents and let’s Sam take his temperature.

“One-oh-three, bro. You’re in the treatment zone.”

“I told you to stop reading those medical websites.”

Sam rolls his eyes as he shakes two aspirins out of the bottle and hands them over to Dean who dry swallows them.

“One of us has to be the brains since you’re clearly an idiot who doesn’t even know when he’s sick,” Sam mumbles.

Half a day later and Dean’s temperature is going in the wrong direction. He’s huddled in on himself, clutching the thin blanket with white-knuckled fingers. Sam worries his lip between his teeth as he stares down at the digital thermometer.

 _104.1_.

He hesitates for a moment longer, then nods to himself as he finalizes his decision.

“Time to get you naked, bro,” he mutters. It’s tough work yanking the blanket out from Dean’s death grip and Dean starts arguing intelligibly with him.

“No, s’mine. You can’ have it.”

Sam sighs. “Dean, c’mon. We gotta get you cooled down,” Sam answers, more as an automatic response than actually trying to have a conversation. He finally wrestles it away from Dean and tosses it to the laundry pile.

Dean’s fully dressed under the blanket: jeans, t-shirt and Sam’s hoodie and frankly, Sam should have guess then that Dean was really sick because he only steals Sam’s clothes when he absolutely feels like shit. Sam fights with the top button on the jeans, the rest of them giving away easily after years of wear with soft ‘thwack-thwack-thwacks.’ He wiggles the pants down, tugging when he gets to Dean’s hips and ass. Dean half heartedly tries to reach for his pants, shivering and teeth chattering.

“G’way.”

Sam makes a soothing non-verbal sound and continues his work, finally getting the pants down to Dean’s knees. It’s not till he gets them off that he pauses staring down at Dean’s slightly bowed legs.

The bullet wound from Dean’s accident with the gun a month ago isn’t as healed as it should be. Red, puckered and inflamed, it looks like it’s not healing well. The stitches… Sam leans in closer and presses the hot skin next to the wound.

Those aren’t his sutures. Sam’s got a slight curve to his stitches, always working with a bit of an angle, an embarrassing habit he picked up in a home-ec class of all places. Dean never lets him live it down. But these stitches are precise, tiny and even spaced.

They're Dean’s stitches.

At some point, Dean re-stitched his bullet wound. At least the top one. There’s no way he could have reached the exit wound. Current task put on hold, Sam lifts Dean’s leg to check and sure enough, the exit wound’s stitches are gone, like they should be and the wound is healing nicely.

Dean’s other leg has almost a matching wound, from where a demon stabbed him, but again, the stitching isn’t Sam’s; it’s Dean’s meticulous, almost fussy stitching. Sam feels something in his gut clench. That wound, the knife wound, is _months_ old. There's no way it shouldn’t be healed by now.

In a methodical flurry of efficiency he strips off the rest of Dean’s clothes, easily knocking Dean’s hands out of the way when he protests.

The gouge on his bicep from his fall down the stairs is seeping lymphatic fluid and some blood. The knife wound down his side from the rougarou has gotten impossibly longer and deeper.

None of Dean’s slash or puncture wounds have healed. Except for the one on the back of his thigh.

The one he can’t see.

Or reach.

 _It has to stop._

Castiel’s words echo in Sam’s brain as he stares down at the shivering form of his brother, fever sick and painted in angry injuries.

And the one thing, the _one thing_ he cannot get out of his head is the sound of the gun going off in the motel room. Dean who’s been cleaning guns without incident since he was ten, getting shot in the leg.

Shooting himself in the leg, Sam realizes.

Christ Almighty, the things they have in the Impala, the number of weapons Dean’s familiar with…. The knives, the guns, ropes, blades…

The number of times they get hurt.

But lately, it’s been mostly Dean.

Sam hadn’t noticed.

It’s been mostly Dean _for months_.

He feels sick with dread and guilt. Fever nearly forgotten, Sam leans forward, grabbing Dean firmly by the shoulders.

“Dean,” he says lowly, fiercely. “Dean!” he says again, with a hard shake.

“Wha?” Dean doesn’t open his eyes, trying to curl in on his shivering self.

“Have you - what have -” he doesn’t even know what to say. He swallows once, and then again, fingers opening and closing on Dean’s shoulders. “Are you hurting yourself?”

“S’cold, Sammy.”

Sam purses his lips together tightly. “I know. But, Dean… look at me.”

He punctuates his statement with another shake, fingers gripped tight and Dean’s eyes blink open, bright and watery.

“Have you been hurting yourself?”

A sharp shiver runs through Dean and he stares at Sam blankly.

“I had to,” he mumbles.

Sam frowns. “Why?” There’s so much more than that one word in Sam’s tone. _Why are you doing it? Why haven’t I noticed? Why didn’t you tell me?_

Dean’s teeth chatter and his words come out punched and stilted with his shakes.

“Have to make the outside match the inside.”

Sam stills. His hands slip off Dean’s shoulders and he falls back into the chair he had placed by Dean’s bed. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but he’s unprepared for the answer.

“Please, Sammy, m’cold,” Dean whines, voice thin and plaintive with sick and fever.

Sam shakes his head as if to clear it. He's got no time for introspection now.

He’s got more work ahead of him than he thought.  



End file.
